Edward MendelsonHyperOfficeA fully hosted alternative to building your own Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint servers, HyperOffice is feature-rich, but it has a few minor interface glitches that need to be worked out.

Scattered minor UI glitches. Some confusing terminology and complex settings. No warnings about opening documents in a way that causes revisions to get lost.

Bottom Line

A fully hosted alternative to building your own Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint servers, HyperOffice is feature-rich, but it has a few minor interface glitches that need to be worked out.

HyperOffice is a slick online collaboration service that lets you store and access files, tasks, contacts, links, documents, and almost any digital file on a HyperOffice-hosted website. Designed as a cloud-based, lower-priced alternative to Microsoft Office 2010 ($499 direct, ) components SharePoint and Microsoft Exchange that's accessible via any browser, HyperOffice ($44.99 per month for five users) is easy to set up as both an intranet and an extranet that lets co-workers, customers, and clients see specific data. If your company is thinking about cloud-based collaboration, you'll be impressedHyperOffice's recently-revamped interface is built on the Ajax technologies that combine JavaScript with XML for fast interaction between a Web browser and a remote server. It still has a few rough edges, but HyperOffice works smoothly for the most part, and includes plentiful training videos and other resources for getting you and your co-workers over the initial learning curve.

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Setup and Interface
You start out by opening a trial account, a refreshingly simple process that doesn't require credit-card data or any other private information. You're offered the option to upload your company logo during the setup process. A couple minutes later, HyperOffice created my "portal"a webpage with the company name as the first part of the URL (e.g., veggieburgers.hyperoffice.com).

When you log in to your HyperOffice portal, the site takes a few seconds to configure and load a clean-looking desktop page. The desktop displays a toolbar at the top, the company logo that you uploaded during setup, a navigation sidebar at the left, andoccupying most of the screena three-column summary encompassing messages, tasks, notes, links, and a news feed from CNN and other outlets. Clicking on a plus-sign icon next to each list lets you create messages, tasks, reminders, notes, and other items. You can use the spacious sidebar icons at the left of the screen to jump to your e-mail, calendar, stored documents, group memberships, and other features.

Design and Customization Options
You can accept the portal's default layout, but you'll probably want to customize it. If you didn't upload a company logo during initial setup, you can add it at any time. I created a thought-for-day motto that appeared at the upper left of the desktop pageand you can add any motivational or any other text you choose by typing the text into the options settings for the page. I also added some Web links to the links section, and was slightly annoyed that the only way I could add an icon next to each link was to upload an image file. It would have made a lot more sense if the link feature imported the same tiny "favicon" that appears in my browser's address bar when I navigate to the page on the link.

The news feed also struck me as odd, partly because the time stamps on each news item reflected a different time zone from mine, even though I correctly specified my time zone in the site's customization menus. A HyperOffice rep told me that the news feed feature will be replaced before long, partly because it's so unpopular with users. For now, you have to find the setting that lets you turn it off to make it go away.

After customizing my portal, I added additional users, all of which received e-mail addresses and customizable desktops of their own. Each user got a private document folder, a private calendar, private notes and other features, in addition to access to the shared folders, calendars, and other features accessible to the entire group. I could also create multiple groups and assign users to those groups.

I also created multiple "profiles"sets of features suitable to different groups, making it easy to design different home-page portals for co-workers and customers. I was impressed by HyperOffice's ability to link data files kind. The menus that display calendar items, document information, tasks, contacts, and more include the option to link to any other item. This means you can link the documents that you'll discuss at a meeting to the calendar entry for the meeting, and you can link any e-mails about a document to the menu for the document itself.Next: Questionable Design and Interface Choices

HyperOffice

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Bottom Line: A fully hosted alternative to building your own Microsoft Exchange and SharePoint servers, HyperOffice is feature-rich, but it has a few minor interface glitches that need to be worked out.

HyperOffice

HyperOffice

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